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• Read our editorials and other commentary on guns, mental health and school safety after the Newtown, Conn., massacre. Go to www.lohud.com/gunviolence. • Follow the debate about gun violence at www.lohud. com/afternewtown and join the discussion on Twitter by using #AfterNewtown.

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Dwight Worley’s Sunday report on gun permit-holders provides a rare and fleeting look at who the gun owners are in the Lower Hudson Valley. New York’s new gun- and ammunition-control law gives owners broad rights to cloak their ownership, rendering detailed analyses — by the press and the public — all but impossible in the future. So look while you can.

The profile of the local owner — culled from gun data secured before the new gun law was passed in January, and married with other information — serves up few surprises, at least by the numbers:

• About half of pistol permit-holders are registered Republicans or Conservatives; those parties make up about a quarter of all voters in Westchester and Rockland. In nationwide exit polling after the 2008 election, 56 percent of Republicans said they have a gun in the house, as compared to 31 percent of Democrats. Overall, slightly more than 4 in 10 voters own guns.

• Women represent only 11 percent of permit-holders in Westchester, 14 percent in Rockland. A 2011 Gallup Poll survey put the number of women who reported owning a gun nationwide at 23 percent, compared with 46 percent of adult men. A five-year study from Gallup revealed that men were three times more likely than women to own a gun.

• The median age of Westchester permit-holders: 58; it is 52 in Rockland. Just 13 percent of permit-holders are 40 or younger. (No matter how often we are told of the link between violent video games and guns, ownership still skews to the older set.)

Owners interviewed by Worley put a human face on owners — something beyond the caricature that dominated the post-Newtown, Conn., massacre debate over new gun laws.

“I just like … the quality of the design, the technology, the workmanship,” said Patrick Hannan, a collector from Pearl River.

Said George Inman, avid hunter from Pomona: “But everything I kill, I eat. Every animal I’ve killed, it’s been with one shot. I practice for that one shot.”

None of these owners was well-served by this month’s defeat in the Senate of the Manchin-Toomey legislation that would have expanded background checks for firearms buyers, considered the last and best hope for a federal response to the Newtown massacre, in which 20 first-graders and seven adults were shot and killed.

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In an April Quinnipiac poll, some 91 percent of respondents supported such legislation, including 88 percent of Republicans. Fierce opposition by the National Rifle Association doomed the measure, even though as many as 85 percent of gun owners have supported expanded background checks, according to Pew Research Center.

But the cause — a smarter path for the nation — is not yet dead. The New York Times reported Friday on quiet, behind-the-scenes efforts to revive the background-check bill, which garnered just four Republican votes in a much-watched defeat two weeks ago. Moreover, there are increasing signs of political gain for those who supported the failed compromise, and detriment for those lawmakers who opposed the measure.

A new Quinnipiac poll showed that 54 percent of Pennsylvania voters thought more favorably of Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., who helped craft the compromise with Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va.; just 12 percent of voters thought less favorably of him because of it. Additionally, 70 percent of Pennsylvania respondents were “angry” or “dissatisfied” with the Senate’s rejection of the background checks measure; only 27 percent in the gun-friendly Keystone State were “enthusiastic” or “satisfied” with the defeat. Among Republicans, 52 percent were among those angry that expanded background checks failed.

Feeling the heat, from the other direction, is Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., who opposed Manchin-Toomey, even though three-quarters of her state’s voters supported such checks, including 56 percent of Republicans.

In October, 48 percent of respondents approved of Ayotte’s performance, compared with 35 percent who disapproved, according to Public Policy Polling. Her numbers are “underwater” in a new survey: 46 percent now disapprove of Ayotte and 44 percent approve.

“Kelly Ayotte just learned who she works for, and it’s not the NRA,” observed the left-leaning “Crooks and Liars” political blog. (The Times reported that Ayotte, along with Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is now discussing, with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., another gun-control measure, this one addressing illegal gun-trafficking.)

These developments raise hopes, however small, that Congress still might respond to the Newtown tragedy in a manner that better reflects the will of the people — reasonable gun owners and non-owners, Democrats and Republicans alike. Settling for nothing would be shameful.